I started gambling at the age of 8, at a bent roulette table in my Devon boarding school. Prior to that I had no experience of money, for ours was not a household in which children bought sweets or were dispatched to get penn’orths of chips.

Then suddenly, in those salad days of prepuberty, I received a weekly stipend of sixpence. As the maximum bet on a single number at the Saturday night roulette school was a halfpenny, I had ammunition for 12 major shots on the green baize.

I read the Sporting Times in the school library, wallowed in the racing terms and longed for the day that ponies and monkeys would become part of my lifestyle. In Walberswick on the Suffolk coast, where my parents had a holiday house, I studied the runners and riders in my father’s News Chronicle.

Mr Rogers ran the village garage and took bets, illegally, at his back door. Racing results were announced after the six o’clock evening news; one had to await the next day’s papers to get the odds. My first big winner came in at 13-2. Oh, the joy of knowing you had backed a winner — and the wondrous wait to learn the extent of the coup.

Rogers was a miserable old sod who called me “buoy”, which is Suffick for “boy.” Once, when a tuppence each-way bet came up and I had raced to his door to collect, he looked at me over his glasses and asked: “How old are you buoy?” I told him I was about a day older than when he had taken my money.

The cause of Mr Rogers’ wretchedness was the first Wednesday of June, 1932. On that day, the Wall’s ice cream man pushed his tricycle up the street, went into The Bell for an Adnams ale and told the assembled company that his governor’s horse would win the Derby. He then sold Snofrutes [ice lollies] for one penny and choc ices for twice that sum on the village green, adjourned to The Anchor for a second drink and repeated the information.

Rogers, wearing his “garage” hat, had driven someone to the afternoon train on Ipswich station. On his return, his wife said: “Good news, I’ve taken over 50 bets.” All were on April The Fifth, owned and trained by Tom Walls, the actor, who had no connection with ice cream. Rogers never smiled again.

In 1964 at Folkestone, I was standing watching a tubed, pin-fired, gelded four-year-old called Bullfrog, who ran in blinkers, limp around the winner’s enclosure as the auctioneer called: “Who’ll start me off at £100?” And among the sea of static hands, resolute chins and unmoving eyebrows, I raised my racecard.

“Must be worth more than a hundred, bound to pick up a few more little races. Do I hear guineas?” asked the auctioneer. He did not.

So I walked up to Mr Johnson Houghton, trainer of the winner, and said: “Dry your tears, lighten your countenance, I would like you to continue to train him.” “Actually, I was rather pleased to get shot of him,” said the man, “but if you want me to go on training the old bugger, all right then.” Bullfrog tried and did not win, went lame and soon after that I sold him at a slight loss. I had been an owner for two months.

Uri Geller came to open a fête in my constituency, said he would not buy a raffle ticket because he always won and people didn’t like that. He was bullied into buying one ticket, one out of 2,500, and won. I showed him a sales catalogue, he chose a horse and we called her Spoonbender and owned her in partnership. Uri came up with some quite impressive reasons why she always ran so badly.

There are owners who make racing pay, just as there are pawnbrokers who offer customers glasses of sloe gin before advancing money on wristwatches, and parking meter attendants content to let you park on a double yellow line while you go to the dentist. Rare breeds, though.

The cost of sending my children to boarding school is about the same as keeping a horse in training, though children have the edge in that they are cheaper to shoe and to send by train — off-peak, at half price.

I paid for my five children’s education and cannot recall a single occasion when I telephoned a headmaster to ask how young Freud was doing, how he/she measured up to the other children, whether he/she ate up or was his/her coat shiny.

And here I am, back on the phone to my trainer, Giles Bravery. Both Bravery runners win and when I ring the man to thank him, he tells me my filly Four Legs Good’s knee is all better and that Saturday and Nottingham now looks on again.

He adds that our filly is one of the nicest, best-behaved, most co-operative horses in the yard.

I wonder whether that is good news — in most branches of competitive life, impeccable conduct is eclipsed by charismatic villainy.

If Four Legs Good is Delia Smith, should we not be frightened of taking on Gordon Ramsay?

No one says Mike Tyson is “nice.” Look at his record. And while Tim Henman is well behaved and co-operative, look at his.

It was possibly my fault in calling her Four Legs Good when she would more appropriately answer to the name of Three Legs Fine One Leg Slightly Dodgy. The graze on her knee is better, but not all better. Were it my knee, it would not stop me from any activity whatsoever; I could trot along to the pub or the betting shop without inconvenience, but then, were it me, you wouldn’t mortgage the house and use the proceeds to back me to outperform the opposition.

“Dear Sir, I enclose a short story; am thinking of embarking on a literary career and would like to start with a rejection slip from you . . .” This was a letter from C. Freud to the Editor of The New Yorker, then the most prestigious magazine in the world. I wrote this story about a ploughman and a professor. The New Yorker published it. Journalistically, that was it for eight years.

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, tends to rate bookmakers as socially unacceptable — “gents” rather than gentlemen. By and large, the profession is unloved: if not uncouth certainly less than wholly couth, sartorially second division, seldom encountered at good dinner parties.

It is right that one does not become friends with these men. The high-octane joy of winning is too precious to be tainted with empathy or compassion for the enemy.

But anger at the niggardly odds is as misplaced as feeling aggrieved at the high asking price of tomatoes at Harrods. As we go to press, betting, like buying vegetables in Knightsbridge department stores, remains optional.

Freud on Course is published by Highdown at £18.99.

To order it for £17.09 inc p&p call 0845 2712134 or visit timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst

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